Qalyar

That's some amazingly dishonest behavior by the auction house involved here.

For the record, I've had no response at all to my efforts on Tuesday to inform them of this. HiBid is sort of a meta-auction site that allows smaller auction houses to operate online without needing their own online infrastructure. This auction is being held by Port City Auctions, and it's frankly pretty stark how different their terms and conditions are from a more respectable operation, like Heritage. Port City explicitly makes no warranty of authenticity for the material they auction and does not even permit returns and refunds in the case of proven inauthenticity (or for any other reason, for that matter). I suspect that Port City does not care that they are auctioning a doctored book under false pretenses. There's still some time left in the auction, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. They still have time to pull this thing.

I know they have numbers as part of the MGN series, but I still feel they're one-shots. There's nothing that connects the various MGN books; they each stand alone except for the "series" number assigned for marketing. Like how the Marvel Super Specials are just (mostly) individual (mostly) film adaptations. They've got numbers, yeah, but the numbers don't have anything to do with each other. But YMMV, surely.

I love Gotham by Gaslight, but I feel this sort of had to be God Loves, Man Kills.

I'll go 6.0 here. There are eleventy-seven spine ticks, and the LR corner is munged up a bit, but the book looks otherwise sound, so I think it might claw its way out of the 5s. Fun fact about the entire Cocaine Comix series: One of the people responsible for putting it together (and a -script/collaboration contributor himself) was George DiCaprio. You may have heard of his son, Leonardo...

Also the Golden Records advertising back cover! The cover price at upper left and the square issue box at upperish right have both been fraudulently created, both are pretty amateur efforts.The issue number box is comically inept, and they forgot the "IND." at extreme upper left when they doctored on a cover price. I've notified their auctioneer; hopefully, this will get pulled.

Agreed. I'd like to have seen better photos of exactly what went on. The label is, upon close examination, fake. But that doesn't answer how the case was compromised (it's far less likely that they custom-built fake cases de novo).

I will note that all of the major coin certification companies have had forged slabs of varying degrees of quality. It's a problem, but it's not the end of the world. I do strongly suggest that CGC annotate the lookup record when counterfeits are known for a given serial number. @CGC Mike

That's a pretty sharp Superman 123 GitD cover for a book that spent time in the dollar bin gulags (also probably the lowest FMV of the four, even it it's the coolest looking).

Hey, I know what book that is! I can't answer what might be done with regard to those copies from a pressing standpoint, but I can confirm that not all copies are assembled with that much misalignment. I have to assume that the hand assembly and linen-cord binding conspire to produce a lot of variation in cover/body positioning.

CGC does not recognize any* of the sticker-based variants (such as the DCU stickers or the various Image newsstand sticker shenanigans). Sorry. *except the Wizard Authentic Editions, kinda. Don't ask, I didn't do it.

CGC's history of consistent label practices with Wizard Authentic Editions... isn't great. I'd assume regular copies, mislabeled. But it's also possible that they briefly opted to not deduct for the sticker and forgot to label swap due to the sig. Or that they really, really overgraded a couple copies. Or that they're just Registry errors. Until (unless?) we see them, it's pretty impossible to know. Regardless, I'll echo the observation that nearly all Wizard Authentic Editions look like they were handled by someone who wanted vengeance for all those Scantron forms they were prevented from folding, spindling, or mutilating in their youth.

Agreed entirely. Also, I feel like irrespective of what was doodled or not-doodled or whatever, red marker on a red field is always going to get a resto flag.

In general, I've felt the last year or so of grading has actually been fairly tight most of the time, but it's clear that they're penalizing some types of defects much less harshly than I would have expected. In this case, that surface scuff.

Congrats. That's certainly not what I would expected with that color rub. No grader's notes, sadly; I would have liked to have seen how they described that defect.

I'd go 7.0 here, but regardless of technical grade, that's a fantastic book.

For the sake of argument, mostly, that Ghost Rider does have 3 punch holes and "moderate creasing to cover" vs. 2 holes and only "slight" additional defects on the TTA 36.

The grader's notes include mention of the binder holes, so it's not like this slab was switched at birth or anything. I wouldn't have expected a 4.0 here, and I do think they were harsher on binder punches in the past, but I guess it's not an entirely implausible grade.

I've never understood the argument that encapsulation is bad because it prevents you from reading the comics. It prevents you from reading that copy, sure. I have a digital copy of one book in my collection (because it was primarily distributed that way; physical copies are rare), but for everything normal, I'm the same way. If it goes in a slab, I keep a reader or the TPB. I think the only exceptions are a couple of scarce promotional items, and it's not like I collected those for their gripping story anyway.

Looks like ebay finally noticed and purged all of these... for now.

A few 90s variants do okay, although certainly not IH181 / ASM300 / UF4 kinds of money. In part, that's because interest in 90s books overall is generally low. But a very partial list of variants that still command reasonable money might include: Adventures of Superman 500 Platinum Batman 457 2nd print newsstand Black Widow 1 DF variant Danger Girl 2 Ruby Red Gambit 1 Gold IH 377 3rd print Marvel Collectible Classics Spider-Man 2 Black Costume variant Sailor Moon 1 Pink Spawn 1 B&W Spider-Man 1 Gold Walmart exclusive Spider-Man 1 Platinum Vengeance of Vampirella 1 Blue Wolverine 145 Nabisco variant

Is it possible? Yes. Several of the coin certification companies are aware of counterfeits of their slabs. However, there's been no evidence so far of any even remotely credible counterfeit CGC slabs, so the burden of proof is really on those making doomer arguments about the likelihood of that occurring.

That's almost certainly this book: In 1983, as part of the President's Drug Awareness Campaign, DC put out three anti-drug PSA comics in partnership with various industry entities. The Keebler one has a story called "Plague!", the National Soft Drink Industry sponsored "Battle!" and IBM was associated with "Problem Child". If you're really into the weeds on these, the Keebler and NSDI books also exist with a $1 cover price (and a notice that the proceeds go to charity). Also, the IBM book exists in a Spanish-language edition, intended for distribution in parts of the US with significant Spanish-speaking populations. None of the normal books are rare (the IBM one, in particular, is everywhere). The versions with a printed cover price are much less common, but they show up online often enough that I wouldn't consider them difficult books to find, if someone wanted to care. The Spanish IBM edition, on the other hand, only turns up anywhere occasionally. I wouldn't consider it a rare book, certainly not compared to the truly elusive Modern promotionals but it's definitely not common, especially compared to its English printing.

That Orkin Exterminator book is a really rare find. I don't think very many were produced to begin with. Most of them were handed out by Orkin as promotional pieces; my third-hand understanding is that the intent was for them to be given to families with "comic book age" kids who had to be out of the house for terminate fumigation and similar services.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some high grade books that were stored with mothballs for long periods of time and have retained the characteristic naphthalene odor. That should generally be possible to deodorize, but in some cases may take quite awhile. I don't honestly know if it would affect the technical grade in the meantime.